Analyzing cause of supply chain competitive advantage based on price transferring mechanism between partners

Analyzing the cause of supply chain competitive advantage is the basis for further research works in supply chain competitive advantage. This paper intends to bring a new sight to the above question. Starting from the main partner classification and the relationship analysis among these partners, this paper first explains the price transferring mechanism existing between direct connected partners in the horizontal structure of supply chain. Based on the competitive advantage explanation provided by the resource-based view theory, the paper puts forward the formulae of partner competitive advantage contribution and supply chain competitive advantage. Through comparison of these formulae, we conclude that the supply chain competitive advantage is actually composed of partner's competitive advantage contribution, but it is not the simply parallel summation of these contributions. It is rather the transferring of partner's competitive advantage contribution one partner after another along the horizontal structure of supply chain, and finally accumulated in the last horizontal partners that create the supply chain competitive advantage. This idea might be more useful for further research work on supply chain competitive advantage analysis.